


The Laws of Gravity

by Kittywu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Road Trips, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 10:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4475354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittywu/pseuds/Kittywu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kuroo and Tsukishima go on a road trip together, in which they travel through half of Europe in Kuroo's old Toyota and in which they of course end up falling in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> "That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, the one thing powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity." - Paul Auster, "Moon Palace"
> 
> I talked about writing a kurotsuki road trip au for a while now. And this is the finished product. Blame [Jerii](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jerii/pseuds/Jerii) that it got so long. 
> 
> The whole story is an actually set in an AU where Kuroo and Tsukishima live somewhere in central Europe. Don't ask. They are also slightly older, since they are doing a road trip.
> 
> EDIT: now with incredibly beautiful fanart from [Natsu](http://natsucchi.tumblr.com/post/125667800094/he-felt-like-with-him-he-could-negate-the-laws-of) (////v////) !!

Kuroo wouldn’t go as far as to call himself desperate, but as he scrolled through the contacts of his phone, trying to figure out who he should try to call next, he realised it was exactly what he was – desperate.

It was harder than he had thought, to find someone who would go on a road trip with him. Not only to find someone who would generally go on a road trip with him, but someone who would go on a road trip with him in two weeks. An already completely planned road trip.

Very desperate, he thought to himself, as he picked the next contact from his phone and dialled.

“Kuroo?” the voice on the other end of the phone sounded startled, he wasn’t sure if the reason was that he called at 11 pm on a Thursday night.

“Hi, Tsukki, I have a kind of weird question,” he said.

“Aha?”

“Would you come on a road trip with me?”

“What?”

He didn’t actually expect any other response from him, they weren’t that close to begin with. Tsukishima Kei was the friend of a friend, they had met at a few parties and talked. He wouldn’t mind his company for two weeks though, that’s why he had considered asking.

“The thing is, me and Bokuto had planned this road trip. But he can’t go anymore so I’m looking for someone who’d go. I know, you probably have other plans already and we don’t know each other too well but I thought I might ask nonetheless. But I won’t be mad if you said no.”

Kuroo got up from the bed and paced up and down in his room as he waited for the other to decline. He knew he would. Just like the other people he had called before him. Who wouldn’t?

“Where are you going?” he asked after a short while of silence.

“Gibraltar - so down south through France; Dijon, Lyon, Montpellier and then through Spain and back. I know it sounds crazy.”

He was smiling to nobody but the reflection in the window, maybe his voice could convey his signature grin. At least he hoped it could, so his chances of finding a new co-pilot might rise.

“And when did you plan to start from here?” The odd thing was that Tsukishima asked questions. No one he had called before had asked questions. And there was a slight hint of interest in his voice.

“In two weeks,” he said quietly. Tsukishima got quiet again and Kuroo wished he knew what went through the other’s head.

“Sounds good,” he said suddenly.

Kuroo blinked twice. “What?”

“Sounds good. Your plan, I mean. You should tell me some more details about it though.”

“Wait, does that mean you’d come with me?” he held his breath as he waited for an answer.

“Yeah.” If Tsukishima said something else after that, he hadn’t heard it, he was busy with letting out the biggest sigh of relief the world had ever heard.


	2. Paper Wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title refers to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1vXvLQKjSQ).

The night before his first big journey, Tsukishima Kei sat in his room, hugging his knees and trying to get himself to breathe evenly again.

There were a lot of things on his mind actually, but the thing that freaked him out the most was the fact that he would be going on a road trip for two weeks with someone that he could only call a friend if the term friendship was defined very liberally.

He barely knew Kuroo. And it scared him.

He hadn’t actually told anyone where he’d be going and what he had planned, everyone would have told him the same thing that he was thinking right now: he was out of his mind.

Also, he had had no intention of letting anyone know where he would be. He wanted to disappear for a while, and he was rather sure that it wouldn’t actually bother anyone. In fact, he wondered if anyone would even realise that he was gone.

But in that second, he wished he could call someone to calm him down, to tell him that he was doing the right thing.

\--

Kuroo picked him up from his apartment the next morning. He looked like he had walked out of his bed straight to the car, his black hair was an unruly mess on his head.

“Are you excited?” he asked as they put his stuff into the trunk.

Truth be told, he wasn’t really excited. He was glad to go, he wanted to go. Even though he was anxious about what would happen, even though he had no idea what he should expect. He had barely slept the night before, he had turned around wondering and worrying.

Kuroo on the other hand looked like he was about to burst with excitement. He had a huge grin on his face and puzzled Tsukishima’s bags into the trunk with more enthusiasm than a child that got to play with a brand new toy on Christmas.

“I’m looking forward to this trip,” Kuroo said. “Ready to go?”

He took a deep breath before he looked at him and answered. “Yeah,” he said and got into the car.

\--

Kuroo liked rock music. It was the first thing he realised on their trip. He had put on a playlist from his phone, Tsukishima didn’t know most of the songs. It were a lot of different artists, and he didn’t really recognise any, but they all had the sound of electric guitars and drums in common.

“You’re not too fond of my music taste, am I right?” he asked. He had probably noticed him staring at the car radio for too long, so Tsukishima didn’t bother to hide the truth.

“It’s not exactly my cup of tea,” he said and looked out of the window.

“Let’s make a deal then,” out of the corner of his eye, Tsukishima could see him smile, “when I drive, I chose the music, and when you drive, you’re the DJ. So don’t disappoint me tomorrow.”

“I’ll try. So you want to drive the entire day?”

“That was the play, yes. We’ll see how that goes. By the way, have I told you how happy I am that you came along?”

“A few times. But it’s not a big deal.”

“Well it is – if it wasn’t for you I would have had to cancel this trip.”

The whole situation was odd to him. Apparently Bokuto couldn’t go because he failed a couple of courses and needed the time to prepare for the finals in the second exam phase. It was a reasonable excuse to bail out of a trip like that, and Kuroo was understanding. But if Tsukishima had been in his shoes, if it had been his trip and his friend, he would have postponed the trip. There was nothing, no obligations. They would see how far they would get every day and look for a place to sleep spontaneously. But Kuroo had sounded like he absolutely had to go, the first time they talked about it on the phone and every time afterwards.

The good thing was, since everything was already planned, it meant that Tsukishima just had to take care of buying some necessities for the trip and listening to what Kuroo had in mind.

Actually, the entire trip had no downsides for him, he probably would have said yes even if he had been asked to join a road trip that had started right the day after Kuroo had called.

“So what kind of music do you like then?” Kuroo asked.

“This and that. Different things actually.”

The sound of a low chuckle filled the car. “I see. Well, then I’m excited for tomorrow.”

Tsukishima watched the signs on the highway, leaving the town where he lived behind. He had simply texted his family and his best friend that he’d be on a trip for two weeks. That they should call him if something was very urgent.

“You look a bit tired, I don’t mind if you want to sleep for a bit.”

Kuroo was nice, considerate. It was the reason why he thought it couldn’t be too bad to go with him, he could talk to him and when they got a conversation going it left him comfortable, and if they didn’t, Kuroo was the kind of person who respected his boundaries. As if he could read Tsukishima’s thoughts.

Sometimes Kuroo was a bit too loud for Tsukishima’s taste, too passionate about things. Especially the few times he had met him together with Bokuto.

But he could be calm and he didn’t talk to him for a while. Half an hour maybe, or even longer. At least it was long enough for him to grow tired of Kuroo’s music, and tired in general.

\--

At some point, Tsukishima had put on his headphones. Kuroo was left with the sound of his road trip playlist, he wondered how it would have been if Bokuto had been with him like he had planned initially.

But he was on this trip with Tsukishima now, someone he didn’t know too well. Someone who maybe didn’t want to have him knowing him better. He had two weeks to find out.

It felt weird nonetheless, he had never found it as hard to get someone out of their shell. He didn’t know what he should expect, he didn’t know how it would turn out in the end.

Things that were hard to open had the biggest treasures inside, he told himself. Tsukishima was looking out of the window, his headphones still on his head. Maybe he was sleeping, maybe he was avoiding conversation.

\--

Tsukishima was asleep as he parked the car in front of a supermarket, not too far behind the French border. He woke up immediately as the car stopped and looked at Kuroo with a mixture of confusion and drowsiness.

“I thought we should stop and buy some groceries, maybe some lunch too.”

He rubbed his eyes and stretched himself as far as a person who was roughly 1,90 meters tall could stretch on the passenger seat of an old Toyota. “Sounds good.”

“So what do you want to buy?” he asked as they walked through aisles of cornflakes.

Kuroo crossed his arms behind his head as he walked, took out a box from the shelf in front of him and studied the description. “I don’t know, I thought I’d get inspired once I see the stuff.”

“You are just going to end up buying useless stuff then,” Tsukishima said and leaned closer to look at what Kuroo was holding.

“Well, what do you want to get?” the other asked with a smirk.

“We can’t get stuff that needs to go to the fridge, because we don’t have a cool box in the car. And we shouldn’t spend more than necessary. Actually, I don’t think those cornflakes are necessary.”

“But I want them,” he pouted.

Tsukishima wasn’t too fond of children, they were loud and got on his nerves. Also, he wasn’t too good at stopping himself from being too harsh when he was annoyed. And small children got him annoyed most of the time.

But this small child was as tall as him, was two years older than him and in fact actually twenty-two.

“What are you, five?” he asked Kuroo.

“Five and a half,” Kuroo answered and put the box back. “So no French cornflakes where I don’t really know what they are?”

“There is a picture on the front of the box and it says chocolate,” he answered and raised an eyebrow.

“But it’s French chocolate. What if that’s different?”

“Seriously?”

“Well, I can’t know because my French is about enough for _bonjour_ , _merci_ and _voulez-vous coucher avec moi_.”

He looked at him and snickered. “Good thing we are in France right now. It’s just normal chocolate cornflakes. Believe me. And I won’t stop you from buying them.”

Kuroo grinned in response, took the box out of the shelf again and placed into the cart. He literally was one giant kid, Tsukishima thought to himself. A giant kid in a supermarket. What a great combination.

“We should buy water though, it’s pretty warm and we should keep hydrated,” he told him with a serious face and pushed the cart out of the aisle.

Kuroo wasn’t actually disorganised. He continued to choose some odd things, mostly when they had pictures of cats on them and Tsukishima started to think that he didn’t even know what they actually were. He knew that he didn’t care about that, because he picked them because of the cat more than because of the content.

He sometimes disappeared in aisles for a while and came back with bread or canned food, and Tsukishima just continued pushing the cart and looking at the food in the supermarket one aisle after another.

This time, he brought a large baguette and a can that had pictures of meat and a white cat printed on it. “For lunch,” he said as he placed it on top of the cornflakes box.

“That’s cat food, Kuroo.” Tsukishima said as he took the can out of the cart and read the label.

“What? But it said something like _pâté_! Isn’t that some stuff you put on bread?” He looked seriously disappointed and Tsukishima made a note to himself not to let Kuroo loose in a French supermarket again.

“Doesn’t change the fact that this is cat food. Seriously where did you find this? Even if you don’t know any French, you should have noticed that you are in the aisle with pet food. And what is it with you and cats?”

“I like cats.”

\--

They had lunch on the parking lot, they had decided on Nutella instead of the cat food for the baguette in the end. The sun felt warm on their skin, it was a good day for sitting in front of a supermarket with sunglasses and Fanta.

\--

“Kuroo, there is one thing that bugs me since today in the morning,” Tsukishima said as they were standing in front of the trunk of Kuroo’s car. The other was looking for his phone cable that he had put into the deepest pockets of his bag for some reason.

“What is it?”

“We are on a road trip, so every extra stuff we have in the car will just add to our gas expenses. So, why did you bring a guitar?”

Kuroo pulled his head out of a gym bag filled with his clothes and scratched the back of his head. “Well, I thought we might need it.”

“What should we need it for?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I mean what would be a road trip without a guitar? How else would we be spending a clear night under the stars than with a guitar? A guitar is very important equipment on a road trip, Tsukki.”

Tsukishima was staring at him, feeling the strong need to facepalm himself. There was one thing he had realised throughout the first day of their road trip: Kuroo Tetsurou was an idiot. Not one of the stupid kind, and actually not even one of the annoying kind, but he was an idiot. And the fact that he brought a guitar on a road trip was just another point on Tsukishima’s imaginary list of reasons why Kuroo was an idiot.

“Well, a road trip without a guitar would be a completely normal road trip, I suppose,” he said as he pushed up his glasses. “Can you even play?”

Kuroo grinned in response. “Of course I can! What, did you think I brought a guitar hoping we’d meet someone who can play?” he leaned into the trunk again, moving some bags to the sides to get to the black guitar case. It took him a few minutes to manoeuver the bulky instrument out of the car, but as soon as he had the guitar in his hand, he opened the case and sat down on the edge of the trunk and started to tune it.

“What are you doing?” Tsukishima eyed the movements of the other with suspicion. He looked around to see if someone was staring at them, and as he noticed the glances of an elderly woman with a dachshund, he felt uneasiness rising in his chest.

“I am going to give you a little teaser,” he said and gestured Tsukishima to sit down next to him on the trunk. Tsukishima remained standing in front of him, his gaze alternating between his hands, Kuroo and the woman with the dachshund.

“Here? On the parking lot of a hotel?”

“Right here in front of this French hotel.”

“Kuroo, people are staring already.”

“Maybe someone will give us a few euros if we put a cup in front of us,” he said with a wink.

“You can’t be serious.”

Kuroo was serious though, he realised it as the other started to play a song that Tsukishima recognised from the music they had listened to while Kuroo had been driving. And then he started to sing. It sounded good, very good if he was honest. Kuroo had a very sonorous voice while talking, and Tsukishima liked to listen to the sound of it, but it sounded even better while singing.

But he could feel more people staring now, maybe because Kuroo was really good or maybe because he was causing a ruckus on the parking spot of some cheap hotel somewhere between Dijon and Lyon.

“Kuroo, what exactly do you think you’re doing?” he said and tried not to sound too accusing.

He stopped in the middle of the song, looked up to Tsukishima and smiled. “I’m singing. Am I that bad?”

“No, that’s not it – it’s just, people are staring.”

He looked at Tsukishima, then looked around. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Without another word, he started to pack up the guitar again and put it back into the car. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. But I’m sorry that I did.” He sounded like he meant it, the typical smirk on his face was more of a small smile now, his hand was running through the mess of black hair on his head. “So you don’t really like being the centre of attention?”

“Well, I’d rather not have a bunch of strangers stare at me in a parking lot,” he said.

“That’s fine. I’ll remember not to take out my guitar on parking lots again, ok?” Kuroo offered him his hand, as if he wanted to make a deal. Tsukishima was unsure of what he should do, but decided to go along with him and shake his hand.

“Thank you.”

\--

The room was small and a little bit shabby. Kuroo hadn’t expected a five star hotel, but he had hoped for separate beds at least. Unfortunately, his French was practically non-existent, Tsukishima had tried his best with his rusty school French and their attempts at explaining what they wanted in English hadn’t helped them at all.

“Oh boy, this might get a little bit cuddly tonight,” he said and put his bag on top of the yellow-green checked bedspread.

He hoped Tsukishima would be ok with sharing the bed, he hoped he wouldn’t make him even more uncomfortable. Tsukishima’s comfort zone appeared to be rather small, he didn’t seem to be a very outgoing person and he always preferred to keep some space between him and other people. It had been like that all the other times they had met before the trip as well. Kuroo could live with that, but he was careful. He didn’t want to mess things up right off the bat.

“ _C’est la vie_ ,” Tsukishima said as he paced through the room, eyeing the curtains and surfaces carefully.

“What?”

“That’s life. Don’t you know the saying?” He turned around to face Kuroo, his hands clasped in front of his stomach.

“Oh, now that you say it, I remember hearing it somewhere.”

They grew silent, he thought about what he could say, but he figured Tsukishima would appreciate the silence more. With a loud thud, he let himself fall onto the bed.

“The bed doesn’t sound too comfortable,” Tsukishima said suddenly.

“You shouldn’t expect too much for the prize. It’s ok actually.”

“I see.”

It was hard. It was hard to talk with him, because it felt like talking to a wall sometimes and it was a bit frustrating too, because even though it didn’t feel like Tsukishima had no interest in having a conversation with him, it didn’t really feel like he had any interest in it either. Kuroo wondered if Tsukishima regretted coming along, if he had said yes in the heat of the moment and hadn’t dared to tell him he didn’t actually want to go in the end. He hoped he didn’t, because even though he was sometimes as talkative as a lampshade, having him around felt nice, it calmed him down.

“I’m sorry that I made you come along,” he said with a sigh.

“Why are you apologising?”

“It feels like you don’t really want to be here, and well, I kinda talked you into this. So I’m sorry.” He smiled, hoped the other would take it as a form of appeasement.

“I do want to be here. I should apologise because I’m ruining your road trip.”

“What, why are you ruining it? I like having you around. Also you know at least a tiny bit of French, so I’d be lost without you!”

And for the first time, he saw Tsukishima laugh. Not the sarcastic, sharp laugh he sometimes has, but a genuine, happy laugh. It was short but sweet, boyish.

“If even my French saves you, you would be absolutely lost without me.” He walked towards him and the bed, sat down on the corner of it and looked at Kuroo.

“I have negative knowledge of French.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re an idiot?”

“Probably. But I’m a cool idiot.”

Tsukishima laughed again, this time a bit longer than earlier. It was a sound Kuroo could get used to. “We can argue about that.”

“C’mon,” he said with a pouty voice and nudged Tsukishima’s thigh with his knee.

“Fine, you are a cool idiot.”

“A cool idiot who can sing?”

“Don’t test your luck. By the way, what was the song you sung earlier?”

His grin made its way back to his face, and he lifted his chest a bit off the bed, propping himself on his elbows. He watched Tsukishima’s body language relax slowly, the tension in his arms and legs disappearing. “Paper Wings by Rise Against. Did you like it?”

“It sounded nice. You have it on your car playlist too, right?”

“You’ll be a fan after this trip, I promise,” he said with a smirk.

“Of Rise Against or of you?” Tsukishima asked with raised eyebrows.

“Mainly of Rise Against but if you want to be my fan too I will not stop you.”

Suddenly, as he saw Tsukishima laugh again about his lame remark, he felt some sort of intuition telling him that it would be good in the end, to be on this trip with him. Something good would come from this, he could feel it. And his gut feeling told him that he was doing the right thing.

\--

It had been a bit awkward to share the bed with Kuroo, but in the end, it had been fine. Kuroo wasn’t a messy sleeper, even though he liked to sleep in a somewhat weird position. And after seeing him wake up with his head between two pillows, Tsukishima finally understood why his hair looked the way it did.

“Did you even try to comb your hair?” he asked. They had bought croissants and coffee at a small bakery and were now having breakfast on one of the white plastic tables in front of it before they would head further south. Their goal was actually to reach Spain on that day, but at least Montpellier.

Still, it was sunny and they were in France after all.

“Didn’t you see? I spent at least ten minutes on my hair!”

“It doesn’t look any different to when you got out of bed.”

Kuroo pouted. “You’re so mean, Tsukki.”

“I’m not mean, I’m just stating a fact.”

“Well, not everyone can wake up with perfectly styled hair,” he said and shrugged.

They continued to eat their breakfast, the sun blinding Tsukishima who had forgotten his sunglasses in the car. Never in his life had he eaten croissants that tasted this good. But then he saw something flying around them and landing right on the table next to Kuroo’s coffee.

“Kuroo, be careful, there is a wasp on your cup,” he said as the insect began crawling up the porcelain.

He didn’t expect the other to jump up violently and run away from their table.

“Calm down, it’s just a wasp,” he said and tried to suppress his laughter. It just looked too funny, Kuroo, the croissant still in his hand, standing at least four meters away from their table and covering his face with his forearms.

“It’s not just a wasp! It’s a wasp!”

“It’s not going to kill you,” he said.

“You don’t know that! Is it gone?” his voice, usually deep and sonorous was high and fearful. He was still hiding his face, but sometimes peeked between his arms to look if the wasp was still in safe distance.

“Still here, but it’s more interested in my croissant than your coffee now. Does that help?”

“No!” Kuroo screamed. “Make it leave!”

“How am I supposed to do that? It’s a wasp and not some mouldy apple that I could just throw away, you know?” He shaded his eyes with his left hand to look at Kuroo, who was standing directly in the sunlight.

“I don’t know! Just make it leave! Please!”

“I will try,” he said and raised an eyebrow at the wasp. He would prefer it to leave too, but what was he supposed to do? He didn’t want to try chasing it away and risking to get stung, but he also wanted Kuroo to be able to come back to their table without him freaking out again.

Then he realised that the wasp was sitting in the little jar with jam. So he got up with both little jars, his and Kuroo’s, and put them on the ground some distance in the other direction.

“You can come back now, the wasp is gone,” he yelled towards Kuroo.

“Are you sure?” the other asked, his shoulders sinking down again slightly.

“Yeah, it’s with the jam now.”

Kuroo returned looking slightly embarrassed. As he sat down, he looked at him, he seemed to be expecting some sort of comment, but Tsukishima just smiled and took a sip from his coffee. “So you’re afraid of wasps?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“You should stay away of sweet foods then.”

\--

Kuroo had stopped to count the vineyards at some point. Most of the landscape they drove past were vineyards, and at first it had been funny to count them, but after number 27 – and he wasn’t even sure where some of them stopped and the next started – he had given up. There were a lot of vineyards. That was the conclusion he got to.

Tsukishima was a calm driver, he drove slower than Kuroo would have if he had been driving. But it was nice, to be able to lean back in the passenger seat after driving the entire day before. He got to see more of the landscape, and he could concentrate on the music that Tsukishima had picked out.

He was surprised that Tsukishima actually liked pop music. He had expected him to be the type for indie music, maybe alternative, actually he could have seen him listening to a lot of things. But he had never considered that Tsukishima was the type to listen to pop music.

“You know, close to Mâcon, there were two rather famous monasteries. We could have visited them,” Tsukishima said without looking at him.

“Oh, if you wanted to make a stop there you should have said so. We are flexible, so we could have gone there. But we could stop there on our way back too.”

“I know, but actually I just read that they existed when I looked up what was on our way, and I remembered just now.”

He went silent for a few minutes again, and Kuroo put his feet on the dashboard.

\--

“This is such a beautiful place,” Tsukishima said as he looked at the lake in front of him. It was more a pond than a lake, surrounded by trees and dark green grass.

They had walked through Lyon a bit but got bored after a while, and then they had found the pond, more by chance than anything else. They were the only ones around, a quiet and idyllic place in the middle of a residential area, offside the city centre.

“Do you want to go swimming?” Kuroo asked. It was a spontaneous idea, some sort of spark in his mind right there and then, but to him at least it sounded like a good idea. It was hot, and he wanted to see how Tsukishima would react.

“I don’t think you are allowed to swim in this pond,” Tsukishima replied.

“No one will ever know. If I don’t say a word and you don’t say a word, there is nothing that could go wrong.”

“Kuroo, no,” Tsukishima said, but he was already taking off the black shirt he was wearing.

“Are you scared, Tsukki?”

“Whatever.”

Tsukishima was staring at him as he walked closer to the pond, so he laughed and sat down in the grass and put his feet into the water. “It’s not even that cold,” he said.

“I thought you wanted to swim?” the other said as he came up to him and sat down in the grass too.

“Changed my mind. I’m not too eager to jump into this.” From up close, the water looked green and turbid.

“At least you’re a reasonable idiot,” Tsukishima said with a smile.

“You really thought I’d go for a swim in there?”

“It wouldn’t have surprised me.”

“All you do today is insult me. First my hair, now this. Tsukki, I can’t believe this.” He bumped his shoulder into Tsukishima’s shoulder, hoping the other would laugh about it.

“As I said, I’m just stating facts,” the other said and tilted his head upwards to the sun. His blond hair glistened golden in the warm light, this time he wore sunglasses. But from the side, Kuroo could see his eyes were closed under the dark lenses.

“So pop music?” he asked after a while.

Tsukishima smiled, still facing the sunlight and now adding shade to his eyes with his hand. “Sometimes, sometimes different stuff.”

He was handsome, Kuroo thought, a tall guy with fine features and light skin, but he was a bit lanky and would probably look like he was still a high schooler without his glasses. And when he smiled, when his features were soft and sweet like they were in that moment, he could pass for the “everybody’s darling” type.

“I should have brought the guitar out here,” he said and sighed.

“Yeah, that would have been nice.” He turned his face towards him, smile still on his face.

“I told you, the guitar is necessary.”

“But if you had the guitar right now, you’d completely fit into the stereotype of the jock with guitar who plays to impress some girls.”

Kuroo laughed, and he laughed more when he saw that Tsukishima was laughing too. He couldn’t even tell what was so funny. Maybe it was the fact that Tsukishima still thought, after the time they had spent together, that he could even try to pass as that sort of guy.

“I don’t wear snapbacks though,” he said.

“But you don’t wear a shirt right now,” Tsukishima pointed at his bare chest and looked in the direction where his shirt was hopefully still somewhere in the grass.

“Touché. But there are no girls to impress around right now. Which would also imply that I care for impressing girls. Which I don’t.”

Tsukishima laughed again and let himself fall down into the grass.


	3. Tear in my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nky4me4NP70)

The hotel room was too hot to be able to sleep. Maybe it wasn’t the hotel room but the general heat. But it was too much, it left Tsukishima lying awake in his bed, staring at the cream white ceiling and wondering if it would help to take a cold shower.

Kuroo looked like he was sleeping, even though he couldn’t be sure since the other was laying on his stomach, his head between two pillows. But he had been quiet for what felt like half of the night now so Tsukishima just assumed that he was asleep.

He couldn’t really deal with heat. And heat for him was what most people still defined as a nice summer day, the days where one sits outside and enjoys the warm sunlight. He felt the weather like a tight corset around him, the air felt too thick to breathe properly and sweat made his body feel gross and sticky.

And the nights were awful. During the day, he could distract himself from the unbearably suffocating feeling, but at night when he was laying in his bed, when everything around him was quiet and there was nothing else to do but to fall asleep, the heat didn’t let him rest.

Summer meant sleepless nights.

“Can’t sleep?”

He heard the rustling of sheets on Kuroo’s bed as he turned around to face him. They had gotten a room with separate beds this time. He couldn’t make out the outline of Kuroo’s face without his glasses, but he was sure the other was smirking.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said and turned onto his side.

“I was, but I had some weird dream and woke up a while ago.”

“Nightmare?”

Kuroo sighed and kept quiet for a while. “Not really. Just some odd things, you know. But now I can’t fall asleep again. How about you?”

“The heat,” he said and grabbed his glasses from the nightstand. Kuroo was in fact smirking.

“The heat? It’s not even actually hot, it’s just a normal summer night.”

This time, it was Tsukishima who sighed. “I know, but I don’t sleep well during summer.”

“Sounds like it sucks. But hey, at least we’re both awake now.”

“Yeah, that’s nice.”

It hadn’t even taken him two days to get fully used to Kuroo’s presence. It felt more natural, and the way the other acted, talked and moved didn’t surprise him anymore. Kuroo was quieter around him, calmer, he probably got grounded by Tsukishima’s cooler attitude.

And he liked that he wasn’t bothered by his attitude. At least it felt like that. It gave him some sense of security.

“Winter or summer?”

“What?”

“Which one do you prefer?”

Kuroo was looking at him with expecting eyes, his head was propped on his hand, his black hair looked even messier than during the day.

“Neither,” Tsukishima answered and Kuroo looked slightly disappointed that he wasn’t keeping his game going. “But if I had to choose, I’d go for winter.” He saw Kuroo’s expression change back to his usual smirk. “How about you?”

“Definitely summer. There’s a lot more cool things to do, the weather is better, the days are longer. Also travelling is more fun in summer than in winter.”

“You like travelling?”

It was kind of obvious, Tsukishima thought after he had asked the question, someone who was on a two weeks road trip had to like travelling. Kuroo had talked about some places where he had been to on this trip and before that as well, in fact the first time they had met, Kuroo had just gotten back from a trip to Sweden and had talked a lot about it.

“I like seeing new places. The world is big, you know. The more you see of the world, the more you see of yourself. I wish I knew more languages though, so travelling would be easier,” he said, his hand running through his hair.

“Well, I have seen some of your excellent French so far,” Tsukishima said. He watched him closely, the smirk on his face, the half lidded eyes. The way he looked at people had confused him at first, but after a while he had identified them as his default expression, just like he looked annoyed by default unless he made an active effort to look friendlier.

“I also know some excellent Italian and some excellent Swedish,” Kuroo told him with a wink.

“Portuguese?”

“Excellent as well.”

“Dutch?”

“What do you think? More than excellent.”

“Russian?”

“Extremely excellent. You could even go so far as to call it marvellous.”

Tsukishima had to laugh and he could have continued, he felt like he could have listed languages for hours just to hear Kuroo tell him how he excelled at them with the grin of a Cheshire cat. The way he said it, the way his voice sounded when he talked, the way he was able to be so confident about himself. It made Tsukishima relax, and he admired him for it.

“Did someone recently tell you that you are an idiot?” he asked him fully aware of all the times he had told him that during the past couple of days.

“Yeah, just earlier, some blond lamppost with glasses said I was an idiot because I laughed about a TV spot for laundry detergent. Same four-eyed French fry also called me an idiot because I thought about buying an ‘I love Lyon’ shirt.”

“The shirt was ugly and embarrassing, Kuroo. You should thank me for stopping you from buying it.”

Kuroo looked at him with raised eyebrows and shook his head. For a second Tsukishima thought he’d throw a pillow at him. “The shirt was amazing and cool. Also ‘Lyon’ nearly looks like ‘Lion’ and that’s extra cool.”

“That’s incredibly lame,” he answered and pushed up his glasses.

“Admit it, you wanted one too. We should get matching shirts at some point on this trip.”

“Oh god no,” he growled and turned on his back.

“We will get matching shirts and you can’t do anything to stop me,” he said with a laugh.

Kuroo’s laugh sometimes reminded him of an old man in a rocking chair laughing about a joke about the good old times. Sometimes it was more of a snicker. And sometimes it was loud and annoying. This time was a laugh out of the third category, and as he didn’t stop for some time, Tsukishima considered throwing a pillow himself.

“I can refuse to pay for it,” he answered and turned around again with a sharp smile on his lips.

“Then I will pay for it and give it to you as an early birthday present. Or a late birthday present. When’s your birthday actually?”

“September 27th. Please don’t buy matching shirts for me as an early present.”

Kuroo exhaled theatrically loud in response, turned around on his back and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You are no fun, Tsukki, seriously. But then fine, no matching shirts.”

“Thank you.”

Neither of them said anything for a while, Kuroo turned back on his stomach and it looked like he wanted to go back to sleep. So Tsukishima turned to his back, and examined the ceiling again. He wondered if he should asked about the thing that was bugging him the entire time, that just didn’t make any sense to him. He wasn’t sure if he had any right to ask about it in the first place, they were just starting to get close, and maybe it wasn’t even of his concern. But Kuroo made him feel like the other actually wanted to be his friend, and that was a feeling he rarely got from people.

Maybe it would lead to Kuroo asking questions about himself as well.

“Are you still awake?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah. Got something on your mind, Tsukki?”

“It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.”

He still wasn’t sure if he should ask, he waited for the way Kuroo would react. The other was usually rather quick to read where a conversation was going or where it lead into a dead end, so Tsukishima hoped he would figure out what he wanted to ask about and signal him if it was a road he could proceed on.

And Kuroo turned around to face him again, he looked earnest, the usual grin on his face was gone and his eyes looked at a spot somewhere in the distance.

“You’re wondering why I didn’t want to cancel the tripe when Bokuto bailed out, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I just felt like I needed to go. And I felt like I needed to go right now.”

“But why? There must be some reason why you needed to do this trip so badly that you were willing to go with someone you barely know just so you could go.”

“You’re expecting some cheesy answer like ‘I want to fulfil the last wish of my late grandmother’ or something like that, right? But nope, there is no special reason. I just needed to go. What about you? Why were you willing to join someone you barely know?”

He was looking right at him now, and Tsukishima could tell that he had been wondering about that the same way he had about Kuroo. But it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, and certainly not something he wanted to tell Kuroo, just like Kuroo apparently didn’t want to talk about the real reason behind the trip.

“You could say that I just felt like I needed to go,” he replied.

“Besides, Tsukki? You’re not someone I barely know. You’re my friend.”

\--

Tsukishima thought about it for a long time, the fact that Kuroo had called him his friend. Kuroo was probably his friend too. He didn’t have many friends, and most of them weren’t even good friends. He didn’t like letting people get to close to him. But even though he would still say that he didn’t know Kuroo that well, he felt at home when he was with him.

He was smiling when he fell asleep.

\--

“Kitty, kitty, kitty! Come here little kitty!”

Kuroo was crouched down, his hand stretched out in front of him. Before him, in some distance, was a small cat with white fur and brown stripes. Some distance behind him was Tsukishima, who wasn’t sure if he should find the situation funny or embarrassing.

“It is scared of you,” he said with a snicker.

“No it’s not, it’s just shy, right, little kitty?”

He started to slowly move towards the cat, who was watching him closely as he moved forward without getting up. It didn’t move as he approached, it just kept staring at him. But right as he was in touching distance, the cat decided to get up and move further away from Kuroo.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, my friend. I just want to pet you,” he said and tried to sound as soothing as he could. He waited until the cat looked like it was comfortable again in his spot and then moved towards it again.

“I would be scared of you too if I were that cat,” he heard Tsukishima behind him.

“You’re not helping,” he said as he made chirping noises to attract the cat. “Do you have something that I could use to lure it to me? Maybe some meat or some fish? Milk would do, too.”

“Because I always carry that with me, like every reasonable human being.”

He was close to it again, he could tell that its fur would surely be soft and fluffy, and his eyes met the green cat eyes. They stared at each other until it got up again and walked even further away from him.

“What did I do to deserve this?” he sighed and lowered his head. He was a good guy, was always nice and polite. That cat really should like him, he thought to himself and stretched his hand out again. “I should have bought the cat food the other day. It’s your fault, Tsukki, you stopped me.”

He heard the other laugh behind him, but he continued walking up to the cat. His legs were starting to hurt and he was slowly starting to feel like an idiot.

“Come to me, kitty!”

The cat didn’t do as he pleased once again, it walked away and jumped onto a brick wall and kept staring at Kuroo. He wasn’t quite sure of it but the cat looked like it was judging him. At least it was higher up now, so he could finally get up.

“Do you think I’m moving too quickly and that’s why it’s running away from me all the time?” he asked Tsukishima, who was by now read in the face from laughing.

“No, I think it doesn’t like you and that’s why it’s running away. Actually it’s not even running away from you, it’s just subtly telling you to leave it alone.”

“Could you please be a little bit more supportive here?” he didn’t know himself if he was dramatically over exaggerating his frustration or if it was the actual frustration that came from the rejection of the little striped cat.

“I’m trying,” Tsukishima said.

Slowly, he got closer to it again. He approached it with baby steps, careful that he wouldn’t scare it away again. And then he was right in front of the cat again, their eyes met and they stared at each other for a while.

The little cat just meowed as Kuroo stretched out his hand towards it, jumped down from the wall and walked into the direction where they had started. With quick and graceful movements, it walked past Kuroo and straight towards Tsukishima. It meowed again as it stood right in front of the other and while he was still laughing, it started to rub its head against his legs.

“Oh come on,” Kuroo said as he watched the cat laying down on the ground in front of Tsukishima’s feet, exposing its belly and asking to be pet. He was about to throw himself to the ground as well when he noticed that Tsukishima was crying with laughter.

\--

He liked to see Tsukishima like that, he liked to see his face flushed from all the laughter and tears streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t wait to see the expression in his eyes again.

Because it was such a visible crack in his façade, it let him see what was behind all of his snarky comments and cold gazes.

And that was what he wanted to see, he wanted to get to know him.

\--

They were lost. Terribly lost somewhere close to Spain.

“Where are we?” Tsukishima mumbled to the window.

“I wish I knew, Tsukki,” Kuroo said and tapped the steering wheel to the beat of a twenty one pilots song.

Their GPS had told them to exit the highway at an odd place. It had made no sense to them, the signs on the road said they were going into the right direction, but somehow, they had trusted the friendly female voice of the GPS more than the huge sign that had “Gerona (ES)” written on it. And that was the reason why they were driving through small French villages without a clue where they were.

“You should ask someone for directions,” Kuroo said as they drove into the next village.

“Why me?” Tsukishima asked with a raised eyebrow. He wasn’t even sure when they had driven out of the last village.

“I have excellent knowledge of French, remember?”

“Oh right.”

But the problem was, they kept driving through those villages, and even though they looked like there were people living in them, maybe even some tourists, there wasn’t a single one on the streets that he could have asked for directions.

The GPS told them to keep driving straight ahead.

“At least we’ll be in Spain if we ever find back to the highway.” His elbow was rested on the open window of the car, and even though they were driving through the middle of nowhere for a while now, he still looked completely relaxed.

“Tired of France already?” Tsukishima was less calm than Kuroo, his hands were folded in his lap and he kept rubbing his index fingers against each other. Maybe the fact that he still didn’t quite like Kuroo’s taste in music was part of the reason that he felt the tension in his muscles rising up with each minute they kept driving without knowing where they were headed.

“No, but I actually know some Spanish.”

It surprised him, after their nightly conversation he had concluded that Kuroo’s talents weren’t in the linguistic department. He knew English rather well, but who didn’t in this day and age.

“More than excellent knowledge?”

“Just you watch while we are in Spain. Then again I don’t know how much it will help me, I was told that at least in Barcelona some are kind of allergic to people speaking Spanish.”

Tsukishima looked at him with a puzzled expression.

“Never heard of the thing that the Catalans would like to have their own state?”

“Oh yeah right, I heard about that on the news some time ago.”

“Yup.”

Sometimes, Kuroo sung along to the songs when he drove. Sometimes just softly, so that Tsukishima had to listen closely to hear him sing, sometimes passionately like he was on a huge stage. And sometimes he just roared them out with all of the power in his voice. Which was, as Tsukishima had learned, a lot. But he seemed to know all of the songs by heart, even if he wasn’t singing along loudly, he mouthed the lyrics when he wasn’t talking to Tsukishima. He liked listening to his singing, it was soothing and it made him like listening to Kuroo’s songs.

He started to sing along quietly at first, then he got more passionately.

“Kuroo, I think if we continue to drive straight ahead like this stupid GPS is telling us we are going to drive straight into the ocean.”

He wasn’t sure yet, but the glistening close to the horizon, it just had to be the sea. He opened the window on his side, let the wind blow into his face. It started to smell like saltwater.

“You know what? Let’s go to the beach, Tsukki,” he had a smirk on his face, his black hair was flowing in the wind.

\--

“Beach or mountains?” Kuroo asked. The sand was warm between his toes, and the sunlight was tickling his skin.

“Actually, mountains,” Tsukishima said.

It made sense to him. He couldn’t see him as a beach person. He knew Tsukishima didn’t like the heat. And even though he never actually said it, the way he tensed up when they were walking through bigger cities, the way he made sure his shoulders didn’t touch anyone else, the way he always had his hands in front of his body as soon as there were many people around him, made him sure that he didn’t like crowded places either.

He pictured him in front of a breath-taking view of mountains and meadows, maybe a crystal clear lake too. He would probably like that more.

“You’re a beach person?” Tsukishima asked and Kuroo nodded, his arms crossed behind his head.

“The ocean, the sun – I like that.”

He walked closer to the sea, let the water cool his feet. Tsukishima followed him, and stopped right next to him. He stared into the distance of the horizon, he looked lost in some train of thoughts. Judging by the frown on his face, it wasn’t a happy train of thought.

So Kuroo put his arm around Tsukishima’s shoulder. He stared into the same distance that the other was staring, hoping there might be a hint about his thoughts. “What troubles you, my friend?”

Tsukishima didn’t respond, maybe he hadn’t heard it over his inner monologue or he had decided to ignore it. After Kuroo had stared at him expectantly for a while, the other shrugged.

“Nothing in particular.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

There was more, he knew it. Maybe it was just another of his bad moods, they came from time to time and passed after a while. Maybe it was the fact that there was actually something troubling him. Maybe it was a mixture of both. He wasn’t sure of that.

Kuroo sighed, his eyes still fixed on Tsukishima’s profile. “You know, the sea always makes me a bit sentimental. It’s so endless, so wide. And then here I am, so small compared to all that in front of me. If you stand here and look at the sea, you can’t tell where it will end, you don’t even know if will ever end. It’s so uncertain.”

“That’s a sad thing to feel,” he responded. He didn’t look at him, he didn’t even change the blank expression on his face.

“What do you feel when you look at the sea like that?”

“Nothing special, actually.”

“Nothing? I’m sure you feel something. At least, you’re looking like you feel something right now.”

“But I don’t feel anything special, really. It’s just the sea.”

“Well, what do you think about when you look at the sea?”

He just hoped to get something out of him that way, because the longer he watched Tsukishima stare at nothing in particular somewhere by the horizon, the more he couldn’t help to believe that the something on his mind was something and something unpleasant, too. He looked like something deep inside of him was aching.

“I don’t know.”

“You do know, but you don’t want to tell me, am I right?”

“Possibly.”

“Sometimes it helps to talk about the stuff that troubles you, Tsukki.”

He wondered if it was ironic of him to say something like that, but he forgot about that again as Tsukishima gulped and started to bite his lip.

“There is nothing to talk about, honestly.”

“Oh, I can see that,” he said and took his arm off Tsukishima’s shoulder. Without a word, he walked a few steps away from the shore and sat down in the sand. “Come here. Talk.”

“I don’t understand why you want me to talk about some meaningless things that badly.” Tsukishima didn’t move away from where he was standing. He just turned around to face Kuroo.

“Well, they don’t look meaningless.”

And then he smiled. Not a happy smile, and not even a forced smile. It was a sharp smile, a cruel smile, one of the kind that could rip his guts open or stab his back. “But why do you care? It’s not your business if they are meaningless or not,” he hissed out.

“I am your friend, Tsukki! I care about that because I care for you!”

“How can you say you care about me when we weren’t more than acquaintances a few days ago?”

Tsukishima was looking at him, his face was red but his eyes were cold. Kuroo wasn’t sure what to do or what to say. The way Tsukishima had said those words sounded more like “why should you care for me”.

It hurt. It pressed the air out of his lungs, hit him like a knife right into the chest.

“Because I just do, ok?” His voice was quieter than before, he tried to be calm because Tsukishima looked like he was fighting with his tears.

Tsukishima suddenly didn’t look like a twenty year old man anymore. The way he was staring at the ground before him, the way he gulped and the way he tried to hold back his tears, it all made him look like a boy. A young, hurt boy. Kuroo wasn’t sure how much of this was his fault, he felt the need to hug him, to rub his back and to tell him that everything will be fine.

But he didn’t, because he knew Tsukishima wouldn’t want him to do it. His hands were still balled to fists.

“You don’t have to talk about whatever is bugging you if you don’t want to. I won’t force you. But if you ever want to talk about stuff, I’ll listen.”

He smiled, he hoped it would help, he hoped it might calm Tsukishima down. It seemed to help at least a little, because slowly, the fists unclenched and he folded his hands in front of his crotch again.

They were always there, whenever Tsukishima wasn’t fully comfortable with a situation.

“I’m sorry. I actually just wanted to help, and I didn’t think I’d upset you. But I’m really sorry that I did.”

He hoped that Tsukishima wouldn’t mind when he got up and hugged him.

\--

Tsukishima didn’t mind, his mind was racing with a lot of things.

Kuroo’s arms felt warm and comforting.

\--

The shops at the promenade looked just like they looked at every beach, the shelves filled with kitsch and other seaside souvenirs that would only collect dust once they were at home. Postcards with photos of the beach and the next bigger town, bottles of sunscreen and inflatable nonsense.

Tsukishima’s eyes were icky with the feeling of having cried, and he was fatigued from being upset. Kuroo was quiet as they walked.

It didn’t make sense to him why he cared enough for him to care about what was on his mind, and it didn’t make any sense to him why he seemed to care even after he had pushed him away like that. But the continuous glances, the way he sometimes bit his lips as they walked, they told him that he was worried without a doubt.

He just couldn’t understand why he would worry about him.

It hadn’t been his intention, to push Kuroo away like that. He felt safe around him, and in some way he was scared of losing that. He couldn’t imagine him still wanting to be his friend if he actually knew him, if he knew how cold he was.

He stopped in front of a display with leather bracelets, most of them braided, some of them with seashells woven into the straps. The one that caught his interest was a simple black one, with a single cream coloured strap in between. It had a small white seashell too and it looked like something a surfer would wear. He liked it nonetheless, he liked the feeling of it between his fingers.

“It looks cool,” Kuroo said after he had watched him for a while.

“I’m not going to buy it though.”

“Why not?”

“I never wore bracelets. Besides, I don’t think it would suit me,” he said and put the bracelet back from where he had taken it.

Kuroo just hummed in response, scratched his cheek and continued walking, just like Tsukishima did.

“We could get some ice cream,” Kuroo said after a while. They were walking past an ice cream parlor, and Kuroo looked at the display and the signs.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima answered. He scratched his knuckles with his right index finger.

“Which one do you want?”

“You don’t speak French, why do you want to order for me?”

“Because I’m going to pay.” He smiled for the first time in a while and his words sounded firm, like there was no point in arguing about it.

“You don’t have to pay for me just because of earlier,” he said while looking at the ground.

“But I want to. And it’s not even so much because of that. Just let me pay this time, ok? You still have lots of time on this trip to return the favor.”

Tsukishima tried to smile, he told him strawberry and he told him it was _fraise_ in French as well. Kuroo made him wait on the side of the promenade, he left for a short while and handed him a cone once he got back.”

“See, I can do just fine, even with my excellent French.”

“I know, I think your French actually got a bit better during the past days. Now it’s slightly more than excellent.”

It was just Kuroo’s shoulder against his own, just a short bump like he had done it a few times already, but it brought back the words from earlier. ‘I care for you’ was what he had said. And Tsukishima tried to believe him.

He still thought about it when they got back to the car.

“Let’s see if the GPS works better now,” Kuroo said with a grin. “But before I forget: close your eyes.”

He raised an eyebrow because it sounded incredibly cliché if it weren’t for the fact that it came from Kuroo. But he did how he was told, closed his eyes and waited.

He knew what Kuroo was up to the second he felt his warm hand on his wrist, he wanted to protest, but just like with the ice cream earlier, something told him there was no point. So he let Kuroo put the bracelet around his left wrist, and once he was done, he opened his eyes again.

The other was looking at him, a little bit cheeky, but there was something else too. “This one’s for earlier though. I’m sorry for what I said at the beach.”

“You’re an idiot, Kuroo.” The bracelet didn’t look bad, the black leather contrasted with his fair skin.

“The sentence you were looking for was ‘thank you’ I believe. But good to see that you’re back to normal. Let’s go then.”

Kuroo got into the car, sat down on the driver’s seat and was already typing something into the GPS when Tsukishima got into the car.

“Hey, Kuroo,” he said and waited until the other was looking at him. “Thank you.”

\--

Tsukishima fell asleep shortly after they started driving again. His head was resting against the window, he looked peaceful. His expression was something close to a smile, and Kuroo wondered what he was dreaming about.

He turned down the music, he knew that Tsukishima wasn’t too fond of his playlists and the fact that he had fallen asleep without his headphones just told him that he had to be tired. He was tired too, but he didn’t mind to continue driving for a few hours. He just hoped the road would be fine too, so Tsukishima wouldn’t wake up by a bumpy ride.

Kuroo smiled as he softly hummed along to a twenty one pilots song, he had probably heard the song three times that day already. He smiled because he was happy, but he also smiled because the song sung about the same thing he was doing.

It had probably done the trick to switch the GPS on and off again because it got him back on the highway and to Spain without any problem.


	4. This shining night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title refers to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyH9epNNx4g).  
> Also the song in the bar scene is [that one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JrAVZfLf7U).

Kuroo could hear Tsukishima shiver.

It wasn’t too hot outside, it was a nice summer night. Kuroo found it pleasant, and by what he had told him the night before, Tsukishima probably found it too hot. Or he would, if there wasn’t an air conditioner that even if set to a normal room temperature cooled the room to what felt like arctic temperatures.

They had spent at least an hour trying to find out how to turn it off, they had tried to explain their problem to the staff of the motel, but they had either not understood what the problem was or had decided to ignore it.

So there they were, freezing in August.

Kuroo had expected that Tsukishima would deal better with that. He had figured that since he found warm temperatures already hot, he should be more ok with cold. But it turned out that he wasn’t, his body was shaking violently and his teeth were chattering.

It didn’t actually surprise him though, Tsukishima was rather thin, in retrospect it was a logical conclusion that he would be cold easily.

“Do you want my blanket?” he asked. It was awful to watch, the way Tsukishima was laying on the other side of the room. He was all curled up, clinging to the brown blanket as tightly as he could.

“I’m fine,” he said. Kuroo knew he wasn’t. He was scared that Tsukishima would catch a cold, and he couldn’t stand seeing him like that too. Kuroo himself wasn’t actually freezing, he found it chilly, but he could deal with it.

“Seriously, I wouldn’t mind giving you my blanket. It’s no big deal.”

But the other didn’t respond with anything besides the sound of his chattering teeth for a while.

“I’m sorry, I can’t really deal with heat and I can’t deal with the cold and I’m keeping you awake,” Tsukishima said quietly.

Kuroo got up then, and took his blanket with him. He put it over Tsukishima’s shaking body, who curled up even tighter under the blankets. “Better?”

“A little.” He was still shaking, his teeth were still chattering. Considering how tall he was, Kuroo was amazed that he curl up into such a small ball.

“Want me to come into bed with you and warm you up?”

He said it jokingly. It was a ridiculous thing to propose and he already knew that Tsukishima would just stare at him with a raised eyebrow. He’d call him an idiot and say no, he’d turn around and face the wall afterwards. Tsukishima never initiated any physical contact, he didn’t seem to particularly like it. He tolerated it though, and there had been one or two moments where it had felt like he had enjoyed it. But in the end, he just couldn’t see Tsukishima agreeing on sharing body heat.

Kuroo wouldn’t mind, something deep inside him even wanted to cuddle up close next to him and hold him until he was warm. But it wouldn’t happen anyways and so he turned around, ready to head back to his own bed.

He was surprised when golden eyes looked at him and Tsukishima whispered his name in a small voice. “Please,” he said, so quiet that Kuroo thought Tsukishima was hoping he wouldn’t hear it.

He sat down on Tsukishima’s bed, carefully, unsure of what he was doing. And then he crawled under the two blankets, spooning him from behind.

Tsukishima was cold.

Kuroo hadn’t expected anything else from how he had been shivering, but it felt like more like hugging an ice sculpture than another person. Tsukishima was also probably just as stiff. Kuroo considered to get up again and to pretend that all of that had never happened, but slowly, he felt Tsukishima melt, the tension slowly disappearing and finally, the other wiggled closer into his embrace.

The nape of his neck smelled like sweat, like strawberries and slightly like sea.

Never in his life had he been happier that he was a walking furnace, Tsukishima stopped shaking and his hands and feet got warmer gradually.

And he knew he was screwed, just by the way his heart was beating and by the warmth that was spreading in his chest that had nothing to do with his body heat. He was screwed because he was incredibly happy while he held Tsukishima in his arms, he was screwed because he hoped that this night would last forever.

His face was flushed and by the colour of Tsukishima’s ears, he guessed that his face was the same.

The calm sound of Tsukishima’s even breathing lulled him to sleep slowly, and he was smiling when he dozed off.

\--

He dreamed the same thing he had dreamed about a few times already, that one dream that troubled him for months now.

He was standing at a shore, in front of him, the endless sea. And he was just standing there, unable to move as the waves kept coming, kept crashing by his feet. Maybe the ground he was standing on was moving towards the water, maybe the water was rising. But slowly, the salty water reached his knees, then his hips. It rose until he could barely keep his head overwater, until everything he could see around him was water.

\--

Kuroo looked like he was having some sort of nightmare.

Tsukishima had woken up from the twitching and the pained moans that escaped Kuroo’s mouth from time to time. But what had mainly woken him up was that Kuroo had started to press him tighter to him, until Tsukishima had felt like he was being crushed.

He wasn’t sure if he should wake Kuroo up. He had found his way out of the arms that had held him tight, he was laying on his side watching the other starting to turn around restlessly.

“Kuroo?” he said and gently tapped his shoulder.

He jolted and opened his eyes. He was panting. He sighed deeply and rubbed his face with his palms.

“I think you were having a nightmare.” Tsukishima watched him slowly calm down and then turn around to his back.

“Kind of,” he said. “What time is it?”

It was still dark outside, but the colour of the darkness looked like the sunrise wasn’t too far away. “5.30.”

Kuroo groaned in response and then he became quiet again. “Tsukki, can you do me a favour? Even if it’s a weird one?”

He wasn’t sure what to expect, he wasn’t sure of many things anymore. He had always thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep with someone holding him that close and somehow he had felt that no one would want to sleep like that with him.

More than that, he had thought that he wouldn’t let anyone sleep that close to him.

And then there was Kuroo, who didn’t seem to mind his company, who said he cared for him. Kuroo, who even after he had pushed him away tried to approach him again. Kuroo, who had offered to sleep next to him, who had held him the entire night. He had done that because Tsukishima had been cold, he knew that, but he wanted to tell himself that he had also done it because he had wanted to.

Tsukishima didn’t know why he wanted Kuroo to want to be close to him.

“I think so,” he answered. He looked into Kuroo’s amber eyes and then at the bracelet that he had given to him.

He would probably ask if they could pretend that they hadn’t been sleeping like that, maybe worse.

“Could you… hug me? Just for a bit. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine, I guess.”

Tsukishima opened his arms and pulled Kuroo in without a word, held him close to his chest and rested his chin on top of his head. He held him like that for a while, wordless, speechless, staring at the wall in front of them. He had nothing real to say, he had never been good at comforting others.

So he hoped it would be enough to press Kuroo closer to his chest as he realised that the other was crying.

“Do you want to know what I dreamed about?” Kuroo whispered, his deep voice muffled by Tsukishima’s t-shirt and his ribs.

“If you want to tell me,” he said. He moved his hand towards Kuroo’s head and started to stroke his hair. His mother had done that to him when he had been a child, and it had always soothed him a bit.

“I dreamed that I was at a beach just like we were yesterday. And then the water rose and rose until I was drowning.”

“Oh,” he said, unsure of what to reply to that.

“I dreamed the same thing the last time too. That time where you asked me if I had a nightmare, I mean.”

He still remembered that time, it was still fresh in his memory, the way he had called it just an odd dream, how Tsukishima had put it off as something that Kuroo didn’t want to talk about.

“It’s a thing that I dream about quite often, to be honest.” Kuroo took a deep breath, he was about to say something else, but got quiet before he started to speak.

He remained quiet for a while, his face buried into Tsukishima’s chest, his hands clinging to his back.

“I can’t do anything about it, the water comes closer and closer until there is nothing but water everywhere. I just wish I could see that the sea isn’t endless.”

“It’s not,” Tsukishima said and suddenly, at least some things made sense to him. “That’s why you want to go to Gibraltar?”

“It’s kind of ridiculous, honestly. I just want to see the end of this continent, and I want to see that there’s something behind the end of the world, I want to see that there is something besides the sea. Maybe then I’ll know that there is something after everything else too,” his voice was shaking ever so slightly, his tears were staining Tsukishima’s t-shirt. Surprisingly, he didn’t mind. Surprisingly, the only thing he thought about in that moment was Kuroo.

“What’s everything else?”

“Everything. The future, my life. It’s just drowning me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know what I should do, what would be the right thing to do. I don’t even know what I want to do!”

Maybe he was still scared of drowning, he clung to Tsukishima like to a small plank in an endless ocean.

“Didn’t you just finish you bachelor’s degree?” He knew about that, Kuroo had mentioned it at some point, but as he thought about it, he had never actually talked about it.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with a bachelor in philosophy?”

He sounded angry and frustrated, his tears kept rolling down. Tsukishima couldn’t see his face, he wasn’t even sure if he could stand the expression he must be having. Kuroo was breaking apart in his arms and he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to do something, he wanted to get him to believe that everything would go well. He usually avoided situations like these, he had no clue how he should calm him down.

He just rubbed his back as Kuroo started to sob, whispered that everything would be fine.

“I’m just wasting my time, am I right? I’m just going to go back to university, get my master’s degree and then there will be nothing because who besides me is so stupid and majors in philosophy?”

“You’re not stupid.”

“How else would you call me then? I don’t even have a good degree, you know? If I only had worked harder and so on! I don’t even know why I didn’t! I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”

The way Kuroo was clinging to him started to hurt, it was too tight and he wasn’t just squeezing the fabric of his shirt but a bit of Tsukishima’s back too. Kuroo’s fingernails bored into his skin. Tsukishima didn’t say a word, he just let Kuroo hold onto him like there was no tomorrow, he even pressed him closer to his body.

“Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever met,” Tsukishima whispered, unsure if he wanted Kuroo to hear it.

“But kind doesn’t pay the bills!” His voice got louder with each time, he was a mess, a sobbing and screaming mess. Tsukishima wondered if there was a point in being that raw on emotions, he wondered if there was some sort of merit in letting his frustration burn openly like that. He couldn’t understand it, but he let him do it, he hoped it would help him, if he couldn’t do anything himself.

He just held him close and drew circles on Kuroo’s shoulders.

\--

Tsukishima expected Kuroo to be avoiding him for a bit after he had seen him like that, but he didn’t. He was even closer to him than before, as if he hoped that Tsukishima could save him.

\--

“So far, I think Barcelona is my favourite place of all the places we’ve seen.”

They were walking through a narrow alley, the washed out grey-brown houses shaded them from the hot summer sun. Countless tiny playful balconies hemmed the facades, with drying laundry and green plants decorating the view.

“It looks really romantic, don’t you think?” Kuroo said.

“Would make a nice setting for a movie,” Tsukishima said.

He had never actually realised before, but Kuroo was handsome. The black shirt that was loosely fitting on his broad shoulders, his hands with the long elegant fingers. His dark, long lashes that framed his shining amber eyes and the prominent chin. And even though it was nothing more than an awful bedhead, Tsukishima had to admit that his raven black hair suited him. He couldn’t imagine him with any other hairstyle at least.

Kuroo had been a mess in Tsukishima’s arms a few hours earlier, but he was walking with the same firm and confident steps as always, on his face was his usual smirk.

Something had changed though, he started to feel like a part of Kuroo’s story, as if someone had added a chapter with his name in the book that went with the title ‘Kuroo’. Maybe that was what it meant to be his friend. He didn’t feel like he only barely knew Kuroo anymore.

And so he didn’t tense up when he felt Kuroo’s hand on his shoulder or his elbow gently nudging his side whenever he called him an idiot. If it wouldn’t have been for the electricity it sent through his entire body, he wouldn’t even notice all the times that their hands brushed against each other, the times they were walking so close to each other that their shoulders were touching.

They were just walking through the narrow streets of El Raval, sometimes talking, sometimes not. He felt like the morning wasn’t actually real, like time wasn’t actually passing for them. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he was dreaming.

Then they passed a house that had some toy dinosaurs lined up in a row close to the iron railing of the balcony. They were all facing the street, facing them, looking at them as if they were watching.

“I bet the kid that lives in there wants to guard his home from the passers-by, so he let his dinos guard it,” Kuroo said and stopped.

“How do you know it’s a boy?” Tsukishima asked and looked at the army of toys, seventeen of them were standing in that row.

“See the clothes that are hanging over the balcony? The clothes in children size look like boy’s clothes.” Kuroo pointed at the clothesline over their heads, and indeed, between some dresses and shirts that looked adult sized, there were a few shirts with robots and superheroes in a size that would fit a ten year old boy, and a jersey of the FC Barcelona in the same size.

“Did you know that I used to collect dinosaurs too?” he said and looked at Kuroo. Kuroo smiled in surprise, probably because Tsukishima rarely felt like sharing details about himself. But he felt like it right now, he felt like he could share at least some of him with Kuroo, like he could open a chapter with the name ‘Kuroo’ in the book with his name.

“I didn’t, but that sounds really cute,” he said and ruffled his hand through Tsukishima’s hair.

“I still have all of them at home actually, but I stopped collecting them when I was around fourteen or fifteen.”

“Incredibly cute,” he answered teasingly.

“And when I was eight or nine maybe, I used to dig holes in our garden, hoping to find a fossil. So when I had to go to bed, I always put my dinosaur figures around the hole, because I thought that they could summon a fossil.”

“Oh my god.”

“It’s ridiculous, don’t you think?” he said. But Kuroo was still looking at him with a smile and something warm and doting in his eyes.

“This is the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard! I bet you were a cute kid.” He gently nudged Tsukishima’s shoulder again, and with every second the grin on his face got wider.

“Not particularly, I was probably just like now, only smaller.”

“As I said, adorable.”

“Please, stop,” he said with a glare. Kuroo laughed one last time and pinched his cheek and then they were calm again.

Tsukishima kept looking at the figures though, and for some reason, he wanted to capture that balcony and that parade of dinosaurs. He wondered if he should, if it was worth the time it would take and if it was worth making Kuroo wait. And he wondered if he would be able to draw them with Kuroo watching.

“Kuroo, would you mind if I drew this?” he asked.

“The dinosaurs? Why not,” Kuroo answered, leaning his back against the wall of the house with the dino balcony.

So Tsukishima took his sketchbook out of his backpack, and looked for his pencil case. He sat down on the ground in front of the house facing the balcony, and started to sketch. Kuroo watched him, he felt his gaze as he drew, but the other didn’t say anything and waited quietly until he was done.

“So, you draw?” he asked as Tsukishima got up again, putting the sketchbook and the pencil case back into his backpack.

“Sometimes,” he said. It wasn’t even a lie, he sometimes drew when he felt like it but he wouldn’t consider it an actual hobby.

“Can I see what you drew?”

“Right now?”

Kuroo shook his head and crossed his arms behind his head. “Later, when we sit down somewhere nice.”

\--

The nice place to sit down was a small park with palm trees and some bony greens that Kuroo couldn’t identify.

He browsed through Tsukishima’s sketchbook and stared at the drawings in awe. They were all pencil drawings, mostly of landscape or buildings, sometimes some weird stuff like the dinosaur parade they had seen earlier, and one or the other face. But the one thing they had in common was that Kuroo couldn’t believe that Tsukishima had actually drawn them himself.

“Where was that?” he asked and pointed at a drawing of a trellis that was covered in roses.

“My mum’s garden,” he said.

“Must be nice there.”

“It’s just some flowers.”

Kuroo couldn’t tell if he had actually hit a nerve, but the tone of his voice sounded like there was something he didn’t want to talk about. It was cold, harsh. He knew better than to try asking and finding out, so he turned the page and looked at a sketch of the freckled face of a young man. It wasn’t the first drawing of that face, there had been a similar one rather at the beginning of the sketchbook. The one he was looking at looked better though, probably because he had improved in between the two drawings.

“He seems to be a good friend of yours, if you’d draw him twice.”

“That’s Yamaguchi. I guess you could call him my best friend.”

Tsukishima didn’t talk a lot about himself and even less about his friends or family, so he looked closer at the face. He wondered what he was like, this best friend of Tsukishima. He wondered if he was more talkative and more outgoing, he wondered how Yamaguchi was thinking about him.

“We used to be neighbours when we were children, actually we were neighbours until we both moved out for university.” Tsukishima talked about him in with the same voice he had told the story about him and his dinosaur collection earlier. Somewhat sentimental, he looked into the distance.

“Are you guys still close?” he asked.

“Not as close as we were when we were younger, but I think we are.”

“You think?” Kuroo raised his eyebrows and watched him pick at the grass they were sitting on.

“How am I supposed to know? He made friends in his university, and they are probably closer to him than I am. I guess you know it yourself, but I’m not the best company.”

“That’s not true, you’re actually very good company and you’re a good friend. So did he start to act differently around you?” Kuroo tilted his head.

“Not really. But I can’t really see why he should want to be best friends with me.”

He sighed and placed his arm on Tsukishima’s shoulder, his head leaned against the other’s. “I can though. You’re a better guy than you think you are, Tsukki.”

“I don’t know about that, but thank you.”

He was a little bit scared that the mood would drop, that something could boil up again. So he tried to think of something else to say, something that was safe and something that would distract Tsukishima from whatever was going on in his head.

“Hey, Tsukki? Could you try to draw me?” It was the first thing that came to his mind, maybe it was stupid. Maybe Tsukishima would refuse, but maybe he would laugh about it.

And surprisingly, he said yes.

“I’m not good with drawing people though.”

Kuroo laughed about that, he remembered the drawings in his sketchbook and even the faces looked great.

“How do you want me to pose?” he asked and laid down on the grass, propping his head on his hand.

“However you’re comfortable. If you can stay like this for half an hour this is fine.”

His hand was gliding over the paper in swift and feather light movements. He looked concentrated, like he wasn’t realising there was still something else besides the thing he was drawing. Kuroo waited while Tsukishima drew, he lay on the grass quietly, trying not to disturb him.

“I think I’m done,” he said after a while.

“Can I see?”

Kuroo was excited, he wondered how he looked like in Tsukishima’s eyes. If there was a way to find out how he saw him, that was it.

“I couldn’t quite get your hair right,” he told him and handed him the sketchbook.

“Don’t worry, there is no ‘right’ when it comes to my hair.”

It looked amazing. Even the hair, everything. He stared at that drawing of himself, and then he stared at Tsukishima. “It’s beautiful,” he said.

Tsukishima turned his head and mumbled something he couldn’t make out, but his face looked slightly more pink than usual.

\--

“You’re beautiful,” was what he had said to Kuroo, and after he had said it, he had hoped the other hadn’t heard him.

\--

While he was driving, the fact how close they had been in Barcelona became even more obvious to Tsukishima. Because now, there were no more touching shoulders and no more occasional nudges. And the lack of those, the lack of the sweet feeling they gave him, was strange to him, he didn’t understand when he had become so addicted to being close to Kuroo.

And they still had some hours of car ride in front of them, hours that made him uneasy because he missed Kuroo, even though he was sitting right next to him.

It was pathetic, he thought to himself, because it slowly dawned on him.

Slowly, he realised that he was falling in love with him.

He wanted to watch him sleep, the passenger seat tilted back and his head turned to the window. But he had to watch the road, he had to drive, and he didn’t feel like he had any right to feel like that towards Kuroo.

Tsukishima blamed it on wishful thinking, on the fact that Kuroo was the kind of person who got close to everyone. But he couldn’t deny the fact they were both not looking at the other the same way they had at the beginning of the trip. Maybe he was the initiator himself.

He gulped down all the things he was feeling, since he wouldn’t be able to say them out loud anyways.

He was probably making things up, for him, there was no reason why Kuroo should see him like that.

\--

Somehow, they had ended up at a small bar in the late evening hours, one with big red couches and old wooden tables. A bar that even had a band playing live music with a few people dancing on a free space in the middle.

It was cheesy, even for Kuroo’s taste. But he liked it nonetheless, and Tsukishima didn’t seem to hate it.

Even though their last night had been short, maybe because of that, they had reached Valencia rather early, they had found a cheap hotel room in a small guest house in some suburb. But the evening was still young and so were they, so they went out. That’s how they had found the place where they were, sitting at a small table.

Kuroo had learned that Tsukishima didn’t drink, he occasionally glanced at him while nipping on his coke.

The music was nice and slow, some jazzy love song, and it left him wanting to take Tsukishima’s hand and lead him to the small space that served as the dancefloor. He wanted to hold him and dance with him, as ridiculous as it might have sounded. But it was an opportunity like he might not get it again, an opportunity he wanted to take.

“Do you want to dance too?” Kuroo asked him.

Tsukishima looked insecure, his gaze moving around everywhere around them besides at Kuroo. “I can’t dance,” he said finally.

“Neither do I. Who cares?”

And then he got up, stretched out his hand and wondered if Tsukishima would take it. He did, his hand was cold and the skin of his palm was a bit dry. He followed Kuroo as he led him into the middle of the bar. Kuroo took a deep breath and put his other hand onto Tsukishima’s lower back. Tsukishima looked at him in hesitation, his golden eyes directly into his, and then he placed his hand on Kuroo’s side.

They moved to the music, rocking back and forth, without knowing what they were actually doing. And after a while, even Tsukishima stopped caring about that.

At some point, Kuroo let go of Tsukishima’s hand and just placed both of his hands around Tsukishima’s lower back. He was closer now, the space between their faces wasn’t more than a couple of centimetres. And Tsukishima put his arms onto Kuroo’s shoulder, his face red up to his ears.

The sight made Kuroo smile, even though he knew that he wasn’t better himself. His palms were sweaty and his heart was racing. But he enjoyed every second of it.

He was close enough to see every single of Tsukishima’s blond lashes. Close enough to tell that the colour of his eyes was golden but he had some brown in them too. Close enough to feel Tsukishima’s breath on his face.

Kuroo closed his eyes, humming along to the low female voice of the singer, she sung about love, he thought that the song suited them.

There was no point in denying that he had fallen in love with Tsukishima.

\--

Tsukishima’s hand had found its way into Kuroo’s after they had danced, like they were magnetic and belonged together.

It was somehow unbelieveable. He told himself over and over again that Kuroo couldn’t be feeling the same feeling of warmth and happiness because of the touch of their palms, he told himself over and over again that he was reading into things that weren’t there.

He wanted to tell himself that there was something though. That there was something in the air between them, that Kuroo felt just like he did.

He didn’t know why he felt for Kuroo like that.

A few days ago, they weren’t even friends, now there he was, trying to hide the fact that he could have exploded with emotions while they had been dancing.

The moon shone in bright silvery light as they left the bar. The air was warm, the stars were glistening. And then Kuroo leaned his head against his as they walked, he was still holding onto Tsukishima’s hand tightly.

Everywhere where Kuroo’s skin touched his, he felt his own skin heat up, electricity tingling, and there was something in his stomach that was racing. Were those butterflies? They felt more like bees, faster and more massive.

“I don’t really wanna head back yet,” Kuroo said. The sound of his voice was so very close to him.

“We could keep walking around for a while,” he said.

He felt warm, and even though it was a quite hot summer night, he didn’t mind.

So they kept walking around without knowing where they were walking to. Tsukishima just wanted to hold onto Kuroo’s hand for a little while longer, and the more he did, the more he felt like he could forget everything on his mind that wasn’t Kuroo.

“I think we found a view point,” Tsukishima said. They looked at the illuminated front of the city, moon and stars above them.

He didn’t actually remember when they had stopped looking at the view in front them. But then he just saw Kuroo, his face in the dim silver light of the moon, his warm, amber eyes, his black hair. And Kuroo was smiling at him, his smile sent shivers down Tsukishima’s spine. He wasn’t sure if anyone had ever looked at him like that.

Like he was the only thing that mattered in that moment.

And his heartbeat was racing more and more with every second he was looking at Kuroo, his face was so close again, so close that their noses were almost touching.

It wasn’t a large distance to close, but it took every bit of courage that was inside of his body. He still didn’t know why Kuroo would want him to do it, but then suddenly, his lips were on Kuroo’s.

They felt soft and warm and Tsukishima closed his eyes for the second that felt like an eternity.

“You just kissed me,” Kuroo whispered as Tsukishima pulled back.

“I guess I did.”

Tsukishima hadn’t even fully realised what he had done before Kuroo had said it – he was aware of the act, but just then the meaning also dawned on him. He had kissed Kuroo. He had done something that he had told himself he wouldn’t, he had done something that he never thought he would do.

And then it was Kuroo who closed the distance between their lips again, he put his arms around Tsukishima’s shoulder and closed his eyes. His skin was warm against Tsukishima’s, was it his own heartbeat that was racing like that? For a second, he forgot how to breathe, but then Kuroo deepened the kiss, his breath tasted like the coke from the bar, it was hot in Tsukishima’s mouth. He moved his hands to Kuroo’s waist.

Their foreheads rested against each other after the broke apart.

“I’m so glad I’m here with you,” Kuroo whispered, the words barely audible so that no one besides Tsukishima would have been able to hear them, they were meant for Tsukishima and only for him.

Never had he believed someone’s words so much. Never had he been so happy to believe them.


	5. Glück

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title means "luck" or "happiness" and refers to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE94akXDtHM).  
> The song Kuroo is singing in the first scene is, by the way [Not with haste](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCN7q70W09c).

Kuroo’s head was in Tsukishima’s lap, and Tsukishima looked at his relaxed face while he played with his hair.

“You know that you’re really pretty from here?” Kuroo lazily moved his hand to Tsukishima’s cheek, and he laughed when Tsukishima turned his face away from him. He wasn’t used to compliments like those, and coming from Kuroo, they embarrassed him even more. He meant what he was saying, that was the worst part about them. Maybe the best part.

So he took Kuroo’s hand into his own and intertwined their fingers.

“Also I didn’t expect that you’d be that touchy.” He took their hands to his lips and kissed Tsukishima’s, sending him back to the highest heights.

He hadn’t expected that too. But touching Kuroo, the slight, soft touches while they were walking, and the conscious sweet touches when they were like that, it felt good, it felt right. And kissing Kuroo, being next to him, those were the things he wanted to get used to.

He tried not to think about the fact what would happen when Kuroo grew tired of him or found someone better. And he tried to ignore the nagging thought that it was maybe just a thing that would last during their road trip, that would disappear again once they’d get home.

“Says the one who woke me up by kissing my nose.”

“You liked that though.”

“I did.”

“See? So no complaining.”

“I’m not even complaining.”

It had felt like their first morning together, even though they had shared a bed twice already and one of those nights they had slept just as close to each other. But it had been the first time that Kuroo had kissed him goodnight, and the first time he had been woken up by Kuroo’s lips on his nose, then his forehead, his cheek and lastly his lips. He hadn’t wanted to get out of bed actually, he wanted to take in everything he could get.

But they had gotten out of bed, had walked through Valencia by daylight for a while and continued their drive. And then they had stopped at some rocky cliff with a breath-taking view over the Mediterranean Sea. Tsukishima never knew how Kuroo was able to find places like those, but he loved it that he did.

“You brought the guitar this time,” Tsukishima said. His gaze wandered to the black case next to them and Kuroo hummed in response.

“Maybe I’ll play some later. I seriously thought I’d use it more on this trip.”

“I told you so.”

Kuroo laughed and pinched Tsukishima’s nose. “You told me so after I had already packed it.”

“If you would have asked beforehand, I would have told so, too.”

“Maybe, but without the guitar, how would I serenade my boyfriend then?”

Kuroo’s words caught him off guard once again. He had wondered about it, their relationship, the fact that they had somehow become more than friends. But he had forbidden to play with the word in his head, because he hadn’t wanted to get fond of the sound of a word that maybe wasn’t meant for him. And if Kuroo hadn’t said it, he wondered if he had ever dared to ask about it.

“What, don’t act so surprised about that, Tsukki.”

“But you just called me your boyfriend.”

“That’s what surprised you? I assumed that was where we are standing now,” Kuroo said. He got up from the lap he had used as a pillow and looked at Tsukishima, eyebrows raised in expectation.

“I wasn’t sure,” Tsukishima told him, his eyes facing the ground.

He didn’t get an answer to that, just a kiss. And another, and another. Kuroo kept pressing kisses to his lips until Tsukishima was smiling, and then he continued to kiss his smiling lips.

“So do you want me to serenade you?” Kuroo asked and kissed him again.

“I probably won’t be able to stop you, am I right?”

“Nope.”

So Kuroo got up, took out the guitar out of its case and started to tune it. Then he just sat there for a while looking at the sky, probably thinking about what to play. And then he started to play, started to sing a song that Tsukishima didn’t recognise from his music and didn’t know at all. It was cheesy and romantic, he thought of the last evening as he sung something about ‘you will dance with me’. It was beautiful, it was sweet, and he realised that the first thing he had fallen in love with had been Kuroo’s voice.

As he finished the song, he waited for applause. Tsukishima did just that, he applauded him and Kuroo blushed slightly.

“Are you swept off your feet yet?”

“Completely.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you back up.”

“That was a nice song by the way,” Tsukishima said.

“Did you like it? I thought Mumford & Sons might be more your thing.”

\--

Kuroo felt like the luckiest man on the planet. He was incredibly glad about the fact that Tsukishima had been the one to be with him on this trip and he felt like everything was going to be all right.

\--

Tsukishima had gotten a call. He had looked at the screen of his phone with something that might have been disgust and he had walked away to take the call, he was talking to someone in a distance that was great enough that Kuroo couldn’t tell what was going on.

It bothered him.

It wasn’t so much that Tsukishima obviously didn’t want him to hear what he was talking about. It was that Kuroo remembered how little he actually knew about Tsukishima. He didn’t even know what had made him come to this trip with him and he was far from knowing what was going on in Tsukishima’s head.

Earlier, he had thought that maybe slowly, Tsukishima would start opening up. He had started to share things about himself yesterday, and he had done it without Kuroo asking for them.

Tsukishima looked cold when he got back. His eyes were hard, his lips pressed tightly.

“Did something happen?” Kuroo asked. He wasn’t even sure if he would get an answer.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” He tried to put his hand onto Tsukishima’s back, but the other twitched when he touched him. So he moved his hand away, confused, maybe disappointed too.

“Not really.”

“I don’t get you. Really. It’s not healthy to bottle up everything inside of you.”

“I’m not bottling things up inside of me.” His gaze was somewhere in the distance again, somewhere far away, where Kuroo couldn’t really reach him.

“It looks like that though.”

“What do you know?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know anything.”

He was scared that things would turned out just the way they had at the beach, it was what scared him more than what was actually the reason behind Tsukishima’s strange behaviour. In the end, what scared him the most was that Tsukishima might just push him away again.

“And if you are scared that I’d leave you if I knew what was going on, you’re wrong. I won’t.”

Kuroo hoped Tsukishima would believe him, he hoped it would help. He didn’t know his story, he didn’t know who had done just that, who had caused Tsukishima’s fear of people getting too close. He was a weird one, he was stubbornly holding onto those two thoughts like a dogma: that no one should get close to him and that no one would want to anyways.

All that Kuroo could do was wonder what was going on in that head of his besides that, he could just try his best to show him that he was there and that he wanted to be there.

“You would think I am some sort of emotionless monster if you knew. And you wouldn’t even be wrong.”

“You are not, Tsukki. I know you aren’t.”

“I just got called by my father. He told me that my mother passed away. But I don’t feel anything, it doesn’t even bother me. So tell me again that I’m not an emotionless monster.”

Tsukishima had dropped a bomb. He had said it just like that, like something casual. Kuroo didn’t know how to respond, he didn’t know how Tsukishima would want him to respond.

“See? You can’t. Don’t you understand? I don’t deserve someone like you.”

Slowly, rage was piling up in Kuroo’s stomach. He couldn’t stand the way he talked about himself, he wasn’t even mad at Tsukishima, he was just mad at his self-hatred.

“Do you even hear yourself talk? You’re so absorbed by that weird view you have of yourself, you’re so busy with telling yourself what an awful person you are that it doesn’t even occur you that other people might not view you like that!” His voice was too loud, he knew that, he was yelling at Tsukishima even though he didn’t want to.

“Kuroo, I went on a road trip, fully aware that my mother was sick, just so I didn’t have to deal with everyone around me being sad about that and worrying. I went on a road trip so I didn’t have to listen to all those people pitying me because my mother was dying. I took the first best opportunity I got so I didn’t have to deal with any of that. If that doesn’t tell you I’m an awful person then you are probably beyond help.”

The next thing he knew was that he got up, that he stood in front of Tsukishima, his hands clenched to fists beside him, his whole body flooded with a cocktail of emotions – rage, hurt, disappointment.

“So all of this is just the first best opportunity for you? So this whole trip, me included, is just what presented itself on a silver plate and you just took it? ‘Well thank you fate for giving me such a great chance to run away from all of my problems’?”

He couldn’t tell anymore if Tsukishima reacted in any way to what he said, the walls that he put around himself were too big, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to look beyond them. Maybe it had been naïve of him to believe that they had something. Maybe it was just like Tsukishima said and he felt nothing, and if it was true, he probably didn’t feel a thing for him too.

“Just make it short though, tell me that you don’t actually have any feelings for me. And don’t say that I don’t care for you too as an excuse, because I do. I care for you, I like you, maybe I even love you. But please, just tell me right now if this feeling isn’t mutual because I don’t want to waste my time with something that doesn’t have any chance in the first place.”

He could have punched him in the face, he could have punched the entire world in the face, at least that was how he was feeling. He wanted Tsukishima to talk to him, he wanted to hear it out of his mouth.

But Tsukishima kept sitting in front of him, the expression in his eyes blank. He didn’t say a word, he didn’t object. Kuroo had hoped that he would, that he would catch himself at some point, that he would realise that he was serious. He had hoped for the cliché last second confession from the movies.

He didn’t get one. He just got Tsukishima’s stone cold stare.

\--

He had wanted to say something, he wished he had. It hadn’t been his intention to hurt Kuroo.

And he regretted, he regretted that rarely anything that had anything to do with his emotions escaped his mouth.

He wished all that had never happened, he wanted to turn back time.

\--

They drove in silence. It was the worst, he couldn’t escape Kuroo after that, he had to deal with how Kuroo refused to do as much as looking at him.

He had known, he should have known.

It wasn’t even that people left him when they got to know him better, he made them leave himself. He knew it, he was world record holder in pushing people away.

He wanted to tell himself that it was better that way, that it was better he had pushed Kuroo away now, still at the beginning of what they had had. But the tight knot in his throat, the sharp pain behind his eyes, they all reminded him how lightheaded he had felt when Kuroo had kissed him, and how much his heart had sunk when Kuroo had said “maybe I even love you”.

He hated himself most for throwing all of that away.

He didn’t want to deal with it, he wanted to run away from all of that just like he had from his mother.

Somehow, he knew that it did bother him. He just wished it wouldn’t. He wished nothing of all that would actually bother him.

The silence was suffocating him, Kuroo’s tight grip on the steering wheel could have also been around his throat.

Tsukishima couldn’t stand it, to know that it was his fault was the worst. He wasn’t tired but sleeping sounded like the best thing to do, he wouldn’t have to see Kuroo fighting back tears.

\--

He woke up from a cracking sound, his chest still feeling tight and painful and the lump in his throat was still there. At first he didn’t know where that sound had come from, everything around him seemed normal, besides the fact that Kuroo still wasn’t looking at him. They were on a Spanish highway, and since there was nothing else to blame the noise on, he blamed it on something on the road. He wanted to ask Kuroo about it, but even without his glasses he could still tell that he shouldn’t, that he was the last person Kuroo wanted to talk to.

So he put on his glasses, at least he tried to, he looked for them on the dashboard where he had been sure he had left them, then on the ground to his feet. Looking for them was an exaggeration though, he was more touching around in mild panic.

And then he knew it. He found his glasses next to his leg, and as he lifted them up, suspicion came true. The cracking sound he had heard earlier had come from his glasses, he had apparently not put them on the dashboard but onto his seat and had slept on them, causing the black plastic frame to break in the middle.

“Shit,” he said as he tried to put them onto his face nonetheless. But there was no point, he had two halves of the frame in his hands and another huge problem.

He wouldn’t go as far as to call himself practically blind without his glasses, but the world around him was just a blurry mess, he could tell where Kuroo was and what he was doing only because he knew, because he didn’t have to see it to know, but the road, the rest of the car, all of it was a blur.

“This is awful,” he cursed to himself, he wasn’t sure if Kuroo would care, he wasn’t sure if he could ask him for help after everything that had happened.

Kuroo sighed as he continued to mutter curses to himself and the glasses. “Got a problem?” he asked. The words were sharp, hissed out between his teeth.

“I broke my glasses,” he said quietly.

“Well, too bad.”

Tsukishima wanted to cry. He knew there was no one else to blame but himself, he was the reason Kuroo was talking to him like that. If he had said something, if he had found words to say back then, maybe they could have talked about everything.

He knew himself better though, he knew that he wouldn’t have managed to say anything, he knew that he wouldn’t have talked it out. Kuroo might have tried, but he would have just choked on words that he didn’t dare to say out loud. They weren’t real until he spoke of them, that was his way to cope with unpleasant things. And he would have pushed Kuroo away anyways at some point, that was how things went.

He knew that much about himself and he hated that the most.

“I can’t really see much without them. I couldn’t even drive now.” His voice was trembling, he wanted to say so much to him. He wanted to tell him that he was an idiot, that he was sorry for what he had said. He wanted to tell Kuroo that he felt a lot for him and he wanted to tell him that he wanted him to care for him again.

“Oh,” Kuroo said. He didn’t say anything else and he didn’t look at Tsukishima.

But he exited the highway shortly after, Tsukishima couldn’t tell where, he just noticed that they were driving through some sort of city. He parked the car and left.

Tsukishima didn’t dare asking where he had went, and he was scared of what Kuroo was doing. he knew the other couldn’t leave him like that, but he felt a feeling of anxiety raising inside of him nonetheless, he clasped his hands in his lap, started to rub at the base of his right middle finger with his left thumb and index finger.

And then he heard Kuroo’s step close to the car again. He opened the door on the passenger side, he was standing right in front of Tsukishima. Never had he felt so small.

“I found an optician. Maybe he can repair your glasses, glue them together or something.”

Carefully, he touched his way to unbuckle the seatbelt and got out of the car. His eyes squinted, hoping it would make him see a little bit more, he tried to follow Kuroo.

“Kuroo, wait,” he said because Kuroo was walking too fast for him to follow and between the other people on the pavement, it got harder and harder to distinguish who of them was Kuroo.

Then he felt a hand on his, Kuroo’s palm was warm. But it didn’t feel like it should to be holding his hand again. He felt like a child, helpless and dependent. He remembered all the times he had clung to his mother, to Yamaguchi or his brother when they had been to the pool so he wouldn’t lose them, he thought of memories that he usually tried to avoid.

The day he got his first glasses, he had put them on with a proud smile in the shop, he had shown them to his mother. She had ruffled his hair and told him that they suited him very well.

Kuroo pulled him along, he walked slower so Tsukishima could follow him. But he walked without saying a word to him.

“We’re almost there,” was the only thing he said while they were walking.

And then it started to kick in. He watched the world around him fall into pieces, the world he had built up around him to make everything easier. Suddenly a wave of images of him and his mother came crashing in, the happy memories, the ones that made him feel warm and nostalgic.

He had forced himself not to think about them since the day that he had learned that his mother was sick. It made it easier, if he could make himself believe that she didn’t mean that much to him. Everything got easier if he told himself that it didn’t mean that much to him.

The tears didn’t stop falling, a waterfall came down together with his emotions. He hadn’t cried in what felt like years, had stopped himself whenever he was close to losing his calm. It wasn’t a calm to begin with, more a forced stone cold wall between him and his emotions.

Kuroo held him close.

Tsukishima had forgotten that Kuroo was still around, he had forgotten that he wasn’t alone. And the warmth of Kuroo’s embrace reminded him that he had thrown everything he could have had away, that he was probably just holding him because he wanted him to stop crying in the middle of a street.

But then Kuroo pressed him closer to his body, kissed his forehead and ran his hand through his hair.

Tsukishima cried into Kuroo’s neck, he felt safe in his arms. He was warm, and he was something to hold onto.

“It’s ok, I’m here,” Kuroo repeated over and over again.

Kuroo was incredible. He cupped Tsukishima’s face with his hands, lifted it up, kissed his lips. Then he wiped away some of the tears that still kept streaming. He let their foreheads touch, and didn’t let go of Tsukishima, even though he could only wonder how much Kuroo was still hurting because of what he had said.

He led him to the optician, and now Tsukishima really felt like a child, because he needed someone’s hand to hold as he tried his best to calm down at least a bit.

Kuroo took care of the glasses, he talked to the optician, explained the problem and rubbed the back of Tsukishima’s hand with his thumb.

Tsukishima was glad that he couldn’t see how the optician must have been looking at them. Two grown men asking to get a pair of glasses repaired while one of them was crying. What a pathetic sight he must be, he thought to himself.

And then Kuroo carefully put the repaired glasses where they belonged, Tsukishima could see it clearly now, Kuroo was smiling. After all that had happened, he looked at him and smiled.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Tsukishima said, he didn’t know if it was actually audible, the words felt like stuck in his throat.

\--

They sat down on the next bench they found. There was actually no need to be still holding onto Tsukishima’s hand, he could see clearly again. But Kuroo couldn’t bring himself to let go of it, because everything that Tsukishima had said and hadn’t said didn’t change the way he was feeling for him. And he was still crying, so he felt like Tsukishima needed the hand to hold.

Kuroo didn’t know why he was willing to forgive Tsukishima just like that.

With closed eyes, he kissed Tsukishima’s hair over and over again while he cried into Kuroo’s chest.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I shouldn’t have said that and I wish I hadn’t.” His words were muffled by Kuroo’s shirt, and they weren’t loud anyways. But they were loud enough for Kuroo to hear them.

“It’s ok, you were upset. I know you didn’t mean it like that.”

He wasn’t sure if he knew actually, something inside him told him that at least something of what Tsukishima had said was the truth. Maybe not everything, and maybe the truth had changed already.

“It’s not ok, Kuroo. I don’t even know if I was upset back then. It doesn’t excuse what I said.”

“Look at me,” he said and waited until Tsukishima did, his eyes red and swollen from all the crying. “You said some things that you didn’t want to say, and I said stuff that I didn’t want to say. I might be mad at you for a while and you might be mad at me too. But no matter how many times you will tell me all the stuff you hate about yourself, I will tell you that it’s not true. And I will be there to hold you if you want to cry just like this, and I will be there to hold you if you don’t.”

It was the best he could think of to say.

Tsukishima stared at him, he bit his lip but didn’t avoid Kuroo’s gaze. He swallowed, maybe he was at loss for words.

“I don’t know how I deserve someone like you,” he said finally.

“You just do.”

Tsukishima’s lips where salty as he kissed them.

“I like you. And I need you. More than I ever thought I’d need anyone.”

\--

Three words that meant the world to him. He knew that they were a lot for Tsukishima, but the way he had said them had been so honest.

The best things came in the smallest numbers.

\--

Tsukishima’s hair tickled in his nose. He opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was blond hair. He pulled Tsukishima closer to his body, rubbed his cheek against the back of his head.

He didn’t know if he should wake him up, he wanted to, but Tsukishima was sleeping so soundly in his arms that he couldn’t bring himself to do it yet.

And the bed was too nice to get up anyways, it probably wasn’t the bed but sleeping like that with him, being able to hold him close, their legs entangled. He was in love, so in love with him.

When Tsukishima woke up, he took his hand and kissed it.

“Are you excited?” he asked and turned around to face him.

“For what?”

Their lips met, it wasn’t actually a distance between them to begin with. Soft lips on his, first brushing over them briefly, then pressed against his. He moaned into Tsukishima’s mouth, he didn’t care that his breath probably tasted like unbrushed teeth and morning. He tried to pull him closer to him, even though they were so close already. But he wanted to hold him even closer, the feeling of Tsukishima’s skin on his wherever he could.

“You’re going to see the strait of Gibraltar today,” Tsukishima said, breathless from the kiss.

“I’m going to see it with you,” he said and kissed him again.

“Yes, that too.”

Tsukishima was still wearing the bracelet he had given to him. Kuroo couldn’t actually remember if he had seen him take it off since that time. Maybe he would get them the matching shirts at some point, even though he knew Tsukishima would protest.

“You’re not thinking about something embarrassingly sappy again, are you?” Maybe Tsukishima could read minds. Maybe he was already an open book.

“Two words: matching t-shirts.”

“Not again,” he groaned and his hand was on Kuroo’s cheek.

“Oh yes. I bet they have some cool shirts with monkeys in Gibraltar. What do you say?”

“We’re not going to get matching shirts.”

“C’mon, Tsukki. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

He laughed about it himself, he was just teasing him. Tsukishima knew that, he smiled.

“And if we’d get matching shirts with dinosaurs on them?”

“I’m not five. No.”

“You’re always mean to me,” he pouted.

“That’s because you are an idiot.”

“Am I your favourite idiot at least?”

“You are.”


	6. Cerf-volant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this final chapter means "kite" and comes from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glquHWFShMw). I hope you enjoyed reading!

In front of them was the sea, calm blue water. And after the sea came mountains, cliffs, land. They could see the shore of Africa from where they were standing.

“Does it help?” Tsukishima asked.

Kuroo was looking at the horizon, he was looking for answers, Tsukishima could tell.

Tsukishima was still searching, he still had to learn. Maybe one of the answers he was looking for was Kuroo’s palm in his hand.

“Who knows? But the view is amazing.”

“It is.”

“I meant you,” Kuroo said. Tsukishima hadn’t realised that he had started to look at him and it was a mystery to him how Kuroo could say something like that with a straight face. He felt the blood rush to his cheeks, felt the need to look at something else. He had plenty of thing to look at.

“Too much?”

“Too much,” he said and leaned some of his weight against Kuroo.

He took his hand out of Tsukishima’s and put his arm around his shoulder. Being with Kuroo like that set him flying, his head was light and there was excitement in his stomach.

He felt like with him, he could negate the laws of gravity.

He wanted this moment to last forever. The view, the wind and Kuroo by his side.

“It’s kind of sad that we’ll leave again tomorrow, don’t you think?”

“Well, you should get back as soon as possible and there are still roughly 2500 km in front of us. Also we can come back another time if we want to. It’s not running away.”

He wouldn’t run away either.

The view they kissed in front felt even more spectacular than the one of their first kiss.


End file.
